Precipitation
by ExplodingWeekend
Summary: Previously titled Phantasmagoria. A look into Remus' childhood, how he came to be the scrawny, shy boy we know him as, and how he got his happy ending.


A/N: Edited. Renamed as well. I hope it's better than the last version; I really played around with it a lot.

Background Info: I watched a special about the werewolf hunts in medieval Europe, and this was the result. One explanation as to why people believed they were werewolves was temporal lobe seizures, which caused hallucinations of weird tastes or smells and strange actions. Malnutrition was the main cause of the seizures, which many people back in medieval Europe suffered from. However, bacteria in bread also made people hallucinate (think Salem Witch Trials).

Whether or not Remus is really a werewolf or is just hallucinating is up to the reader, I suppose. Sorry if it gets confusing.

(While editing, "Runaway" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came on. It's the perfect song for this!)

Precipitation

Ever since I was young, I've had nightmares. Horrible dreams full of teeth and claws and fur. I used to get so scared at night that I would scramble across the dark hallway to my parent's room. They didn't understand the dreams, and I knew that that scared them.

As a child I didn't understand them either, I didn't know what the dreams meant. I didn't know that they were something I should have kept to myself, because talking about the nightmares scared other people. The few other children I did know stopped talking to me; my immediate family stopped coming over for the holidays.

When I was five, my mother took me to specialists of all different kinds. Each one told us something different. I was either crazy or unstable, or too advanced for my age. Some said that I was just going through a phase; others thought that my inner self was trying to express itself through dreams. My mother was unsatisfied with all these answers, and she started to give more and more money to the doctors and psychiatrists we saw.

My mother got angry. Dad got angry. One day he left, and mom stopped talking to me. Finally, she sent me to an aunt in the more rural part of the country.

I was afraid of this aunt. She smelled like wet cigarettes and she had a lot of cats. The cats didn't like me; in fact, they hated me. My aunt hated me too.

I was given a small room in the attic. My mother kissed me goodbye and promised to visit me.

I didn't see her for another three years. I was six when I went to live with my aunt.

The nightmares got worse, and I had started to sleep walk. I screamed myself hoarse every night, and in the morning my aunt would scream herself hoarse at me for keeping her awake at night. We had matching sore throats and dark rings under our eyes.

One day a doctor came to our house. I guess my aunt had called him over; I never remembered her making any phone calls, though.

After he left, Aunt told me that he was a good doctor, not like the other ones. I think she liked that he called her "Miss" and not "Ma'am". I called her "ma'am".

I liked him too at first. To my six year old mind he was the man who could make those dreams go away for good. He had promised it to me the first day we saw him.

He made a lot of promises that day, now that I look back at it. He never offered any explanations until about a week later.

He came over every other day, bringing different medical journals to read over with my aunt. He would then look into my eyes with a bright light. That made me a little angry; I didn't like the light and it made my head hurt a bit.

A month since the first day he came, he told my aunt to stop feeding me certain foods. Meat, bread, anything sweet or that came from animals. He said that it was corrupting my mind.

I didn't know what was going on at first. Then I saw the locks.

After the doctor left, Aunt got a big box of locks from under a counter and started to put them on the cabinets. She even put one on the pantry. Then she took a big key ring and locked each lock with its own key. I stood in the middle of the kitchen and watched her do this.

"What are you doing?"

She looked at me and shrugged. "The doctor thinks this will make your dreams go away. It's okay."

I shifted uncomfortably and went up to my room to finish the book I had borrowed from Aunt's library the other day.

I was so engrossed in the book I didn't come down for dinner that night, for I had smelled no odors of food coming from the kitchen.

It wasn't until a week later that I caught on. Somehow, my six year old mind hadn't thought it was so strange that my Aunt had stopped giving me dinner. I hadn't minded at first, thinking she was just waiting to go to the store, but a week later and I was starting to get worried.

That was wrong. I wasn't getting worried, I was getting hungry. And the dreams were getting worse.

"Why have you stopped shopping? We need food."

"I don't. We don't. Everything's fine." My aunt smiled at me, but I knew that there was nothing behind that it.

"I'm hungry." I complained, something that was very out of my character.

The smile was completely wiped off her face. "No you're not. I feed you every day, why would you be hungry?"

I must have looked at her like she had gone mental, because she suddenly got very angry and dragged me to my room.

"If you can't appreciate the meals I give you, then there will be no dinner for you tonight!"

I stared at shock in her as she slammed the door to my room shut.

A week after that the young doctor came to our house to check up on us. I hadn't seen him in a while, and at first he scared me. Something about the way he moved, I think. It looked like he was getting ready to run at any moment.

"Would you like something to eat?" My aunt offered, holding out a tin of biscuits. He took one and munched on it gratefully.

"Here you go," she said, handing me an apple. I nodded and took it, biting into it and smiling as the juice dribbled down my chin.

I looked up to see the doctor scowling at me. I inhaled deeply and looked away. His eyes had seemed so dark just then.

"I hope you're not feeding him too much," he said. "He should be kept on a very strict diet if you want to help him."

My aunt wrung her hands. "That's just it… I… I don't think this is helping."

"Nonsense!" The doctor shouted. "I mean..."

He paused, looked out the window, and got up from his seat. "I must be going, now. Thank you for the…" He walked out the door without another word.

The police didn't question us much. They didn't explain much to us, either. Just that the man who had posed as my doctor had been delusional, kicked out of school for his bizarre treatments.

I had apparently gotten off easy.

My aunt didn't forgive herself for a while. She cried a lot; every time she looked at me the fat tears would trail down her sallow cheeks.

She didn't last long after that. I got sick, she got sick; I got lucky, she didn't. I was too sick to attend the funeral.

I didn't believe she was dead at first. I didn't cry when I was told the news. My mother came for the funeral and to bring me home, and at first she just held me and cried. I didn't move.

After the funeral my mom drove me home. The drive was very quiet, and I tried to break the silence by kicking the glove compartment with my new galoshes, bought by my mother. After about the fifth kick, she reached over and grabbed my ankle, pulling it down so my legs were in the position I would normally sit in. I glanced at her face and felt my eyes tear up, but I quickly looked out the window to watch the rain. It made my head hurt a bit less.

_Precipitation_, I thought, a word that I had just read in a book recently. I hadn't known what it meant, and I had asked my aunt about it.

She was dying, then. I remember her leaning back in her rocking chair, petting one of the cats and mumbling something to it.

"Precipitation… that's rain. Rain is when God cries." I remember hearing the patter of rain against the window then.

"Is God crying now?" I asked.

She just nodded.

* * *

"You really mean it? I can really, really go?" I felt the urge to hug my mother, something I had never done before.

"Yes, Remus, I suppose you can," she said, reading over the letter again. "It… does sound nice. Maybe you can learn something that will help with the—"

She stopped short and looked up at me with wide eyes.

"Yeah," I said, meeting her eyes awkwardly. "Yeah, maybe I can learn something that will help."

"Okay, Remus. I'll let you go. But you need to promise that you'll keep taking your medicine, and eat lots and lots of good food."

"Of course, mom."

I was ten now, but so much more mature than the other kids my age. Not that I ever really hung out with kids my own age, but I digress.

After my mother had taken me home and baked about ten pies for me, a real doctor had come and diagnosed me with the real cause of my nightmares (which were actually hallucinations): temporal lobe seizures.

Even though I should probably have been angry with my mother for abandoning me like that without knowing the condition I really was in, I knew it wasn't her fault. She had just been scared, and she had given birth to me at a young age.

Things were still weird between us, and I felt no real connection to her, but things had gotten better.

I was healthier, but still in pretty bad shape and stick thin. I was on medication for the seizures, even though they were practically untreatable.

And I started to do things. Things that—despite how little I understood them—didn't scare me. I could do my chores just by moving things with my mind. I could find objects I had lost very easily, without really looking for them. My mom noticed these things too, but she didn't try to discourage me from doing them. She actually offered up something helpful for once.

"My father was a wizard. That means he could do magic. It skipped over me, but I always hoped that one day you could do something like this too. Don't be frightened, Remus, it's a gift." She put her hand awkwardly on my forearm before quickly removing it.

When I was ten, I received my letter to Hogwarts. She agreed to send me off. It wasn't that she hated having me around; she just didn't like to be reminded about her past mistakes every time she looked at my face.

The scars had been a birthday gift when I turned eight. She had awoken to find me lying on her bedroom floor, a gaping hole in my bedroom door and my face and hands bloody. My chest was also littered with small but deep cuts that I had probably gotten when I dragged myself through the hole. She had screamed at first, then somehow regained her senses and started to tend to me. By the time I was awake and wrapped up, she had been crying by my side for about an hour. I had been confused at first, for I could never remember anything about the night. I still don't recall exactly what happened.

The scars had stayed, and I knew that every time my mom looked at me she was reminded of that night. When I had started to experiment with my magical abilities, I had tried to get rid of the scars. I only succeeded in making more.

The drive to the train station was spent in silence, much like that other time that still haunted me. This time, my head hurt a bit less, and I was much happier and much healthier. My mom had the windshield wipers going at a sluggish speed, and watching them go from one side to the other was almost hypnotic. I crossed my left leg over the other and the tip of my new galosh hit the glove compartment. I froze, remembering what had happened last time.

My mother continued to drive on as if nothing had happened. I was careful not to move again, lest I hit something else, like the steering wheel, which would make us spin out into the road and probably hit a truck, which would push us over the bridge we were crossing over now and into the lake below…

"Remus, we're here," my mother said, reaching out for me but stopping when she saw me flinch.

"Sorry," we said at the same time, and I sighed.

"Thanks for everything, mom. I… maybe I'll visit… during the breaks."

My mother nodded. "Okay, but… I mean, you don't have to. I'll… send you letters, lots of letters. Maybe I'll even get an owl."

We stared at each other for a little while more, before I turned to reach for the handle of the passenger door.

"Remus—" my mother started, reaching over to me and placing her hand on my face. "Remus, I'm so sorry. I feel so bad for giving you away, and I hate myself for it. I regret it every day. But I do love you, Remus, very much. You're the greatest thing I've ever had in my life, and I wouldn't give you up for anything."

I stared at her, shocked, and for once I couldn't think of a thing to say. "I—mom, I… I love you too, I guess." The words felt bitter on my tongue, but I got them out anyway. "You've been a great mom."

She started to cry, and I felt more uncomfortable than ever. "Remus, don't lie. Ever. Especially not to your mother." She sniffled some more but managed to compose herself. "Okay, to make up for all the bad parenting I've done in the past, I'm going to give you some motherly advice. Don't talk to strangers. Look both ways before crossing the street. Wash behind your ears." A flash of something unrecognizable shined in her eyes. "Make some good friends, Remus. Friends that will love you for who you are. And please, please, take your medicine."

I smiled. She really cared about me, how funny. "Yes, mother. I'll be sure to do all of those." Maybe with the exception of the "friends" part. I doubted anyone would really want to be friends with me. "Especially the last one."

"Good, Remus. That's my boy." She handed me my bags and helped me out of the car. "Oh, and Remus?" She called as I was walking away. I turned back to her.

"I want you to have this. I hope you like it, and I'm sorry I didn't give you enough of it when your- when you were little." I pretended not to notice the jump in her words and took the small bag she was holding out to me.

"Now hurry, Remus, or you'll be late!" I smiled at her and ran through the doors of the station to catch my train. Platform 9-3/4. It was surprisingly easy enough to find, if you looked in the right place. I chose a spot on the train that was unoccupied and sat down.

Two other boys soon joined my cabin, looking nice enough. They had shaggy black hair and wore mischievous looks, though one had glasses and the other was more pale and well-dressed. Both of them smiled when they saw me, and I suddenly became very self conscious. Surely they could see the scars, why weren't they disgusted? I looked down at my hands and torn nails and tried to look uninterested.

They sat down anyways, though, and when a third boy came in and introduced himself as Peter, they smiled and greeted him too. They said their names were James Potter and Sirius Black. I assumed that they were friends, but when I asked them later, they said they had never met before that day.

When the train retched into motion, and the other boys started to talk amongst themselves, I was reminded of the bag my mother gave me. It was small and made of paper and it carried the insignia of the grocery store near our house that my mother usually shopped at. I carefully opened it and pulled out a solid rectangle covered in colorful paper.

On the wrapper, it read:

_Chocolate Bar_.

"That looks good," the pudgy boy, Peter, said. "I like chocolate, but not as much as other foods like pie or cake or steak. Those are all really good too."

The boy named Sirius—or was it James?—anyway, the one with the glasses looked over and quirked his lips into a smile. "Is it Muggle? Man, you have not had anything until you have had magic chocolate bars. There are all sorts—"

He started to list the different sorts, and I started to feel a little overwhelmed. I looked up at the other boy, who I was pretty sure had introduced himself as Sirius. He smirked.

"You look like you don't know what to do with it. Have you had one before?"

I think that other people might have been insulted if someone said that to them, but I didn't. He was right about me not knowing what to do with it, and for some reason, I felt compelled to answer his question.

"No," I said finally, smiling at the other occupants of the cabin, that same empty smile my aunt had fed me all those years ago. "No, I honestly have never had one."

"That's okay," Sirius answered calmly. "I'll show you." He took the chocolate bar from my hands, undid the wrappings, and broke off a piece. He held it out carefully, as though he were feeding a wild animal.

Perhaps he was.

I took the chocolate hesitantly and put it in my mouth. I savored the flavor for a bit before swallowing.

Tears sprang forth.

"What is it?" James asked breathlessly. "Do you not like it?"

I shook my head wildly and reached for another piece. "That's not it at all," I whispered. "I love it."

I gave an honest smile this time, and was rewarded with three genuine smiles in return.

Maybe I could listen to my mother's advice after all.


End file.
